Concise description of the Lua vm?

Question

I've skimmed Programming in Lua, I've looked at the Lua Reference.

However, they both tells me this function does this, but not how.

When reading SICP, I got this feeling of: "ah, here's the computational model underlying scheme"; I'm trying to get the same sense concerning Lua -- i.e. a concise description of it's vm, a "how" rather than a "what".

Does anyone know of a good document (besides the C source) describing this?

Answer 1

You might want to read the No-Frills Intro to Lua 5(.1) VM Instructions (pick a link, click on the Docs tab, choose English -> Go).

I don't remember exactly where I've seen it, but I remember reading that Lua's authors specifically discourage end-users from getting into too much detail on the VM; I think they want it to be as much of an implementation detail as possible.